Bitter as Salt and Stone
by Seraphim Grace
Summary: Majou is a programmer in a desolate world haunted by a figure he can't quite recognise, a figure that tells him to come home and that it's not his world. Written for RemixRedux08


Title: Bitter as Salt and Stone (Otherland vs Idlewild remix)  
Author: icetealc  
Summary: Schuldig doesn't want to say goodbye  
Fandom: Weiss Kreuz  
Pairing: Nagi/Schuldig  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Belongs to Koyasu and not me.  
Original story: The World and the Flesh by Daegaer community./springkink/375801.html

The voice met him at the bottom of the stairs, high, nasal, unmistakably male, there was the tang of cigarette smoke, something that Majou hadn't smelt in years, but he always associated with the voice. It was like a shadow in the dark of the stair well into the abandoned apartments there, among the rot and the ruin, he didn't turn to look because the figure was only ever in the corner of his eye. He knew if he turned around it would be gone. "You don't belong here." It said, and Majou, having heard all this before, just pulled up the collar of his coat and walked into the rain.

Neu Vien had been shattered in the war, before Majou was born, and now it was waterlogged, painted black by pollution with lights in the remaining apartments. Most people went anywhere else, to the high rises that littered the city, above the cloud cover and the rain, it didn't matter to Majou, he liked the rain, and his apartment was high enough off the ground to not make the climb unbearable and not so low it was easily looted or over run by the packs of wild dogs that haunted the streets at night; they ran through the rain and puddles and tore apart anything in their way.

They kept to their places in the day time, and avoided him, and had always done so, even when he was a street kid, earning the name Majou. He heard voices in the darkness, saw shadows of figures that were never there, more bitter, more sharp, more dangerous than the other indigs. Sometimes it was the flash of knives, or a muffled scream, this time it was a ghost. "You don't belong here," the nasal voice said. "This isn't your world." He almost saw him in the polished black stone foundation of the building, a flash of red hair and bronze skin, sucking on a cigarette. "Wake up."

Majou sniffed and carried on his way, ignoring the shadow the way he always did, carrying on to the stalls that sold food, wiping his nose with the back of a damp sleeve. "Hey, kid," the stall owner said handing him a bowl of plain soba noodles, "you going to see the Gods?"

Majou took the bowl and inhaled the steam before picking up the steel chopsticks to eat the noodles, the stall owner laid out a bowl of hot black tea, but the milk was long gone. He only saw milk when he went to see the Gods. "Yeah, programming dispute." Majou said, wiping his mouth of the thin soup the noodles came in. "You know they can't program their own lights."

The stall owner laughed, "you don't get enough, you should live upside, among the stars, above the sky with the other Gods, you don't belong here."

Majou stopped at the words, the shadow talking through the stall owner, "maybe," he said, and threw a few tokens down on the counter and carried on his way.

He saw the shadow again at the mirrored door of the Ephebus building that led to the sky ways and the places of the gods, "wake up," the voice whispered in his ear, "please, I miss you." There was a strange sensation about the side of his face, like a hand cupping his cheek.

The guards let him in without question, they knew him well enough by now. They locked the door behind him and he walked over to the polished doors of the elevator as they slid open to reveal the carpeted and panelled walls that led to the world of the gods. The elevator had two options, up and down. Majou chose up.

There were lush ancient carpets over the floor, "this isn't your world." the shadow said from the reflection on the window, "you are being manipulated." That at least was new, Majou still ignored it, as the shadowy hand ran along his face again, "this world isn't real, wake up."

He went to the jack, and pulled the wire, plugging it into the port into his neck and opening the way to the land of the gods, feeling the lingering of that voice with him.

He ignored the hand, the voice, the shadow, and pushed open the door to Neverland. There were stars hanging from the ceiling, programmed in, and a great mountain, the bay of the Mermaids, there was Tiger Lily's Indian camp and Captain Hook's pirate ship. He blinked and the code became visible, so he picked it up and pulled it tight so without moving he stood in the Pantheon of the Gods, beyond Neverland, beyond Mordor.

He was a programmer, he could see the code that the Gods lived in. "Your whole world is fake." The shadow said from behind him to the left. "It's code, just like this place." He felt more real here, now amongst the code, "this is just a computer game, a group called Rosenkreuz holds you hostage in a tank with a port in your neck and an oxygen mask. You are a telekinetic, they are using you to build this facsimile world. You are not here."

He walked forward, ignoring his own private delusion, seeing the tear in the code he was expected to fix, "Nagi, please." The ghost said, "please, wake up, this is not your world, we miss you."

Majou waved the voice away, ignoring it as he started his magic, weaving through the code, fixing the mistakes in Wonderland, there were four worlds, Mordor, Neverland, Wonderland and the Pantheon of the Gods. There were three gods, Thought, Strength and Voice. They lived in their code worlds but lay deep in the heart of this building in glass tanks. "So do you." The voice whispered. "Take off the mask and wake up," Plugged into the mainframe everything was more real to Majou, even the shadow, with his hands curling along his face, dragging nails along his jaw, "my beautiful Nagi," the voice said, "please."

He shrugged the voice away again, ripping open the code to see the bones of it, to mend the White Rabbit in Voice's Wonderland, twisting the code to make the white rabbit slightly more sinister. "Come back to us," the voice urged, "come back to the real world."

Majou twisted the code and pulled open the Garden of Earthly Delights, as they called it, creating a great chasm over where he had put Voice so long before, before making the garden slightly more his own, with Lovecraftian nightmares flying across the Queen of Heart's castle. Rivendell had so easily become Mordor, and the Indian maidens, Wendy and the mermaids gathered around his throne in Peter's grotto, sprawled out for his every whim and sexual pleasure. He would spend all his days here, as a god of gods, the lord of emperors, and he spent his nights among the indigs, among his own kind, even though the voice, his own personal delusion, begged at him with someone else's name.


End file.
